Navigating Menopause with a Coach: Your Accountability Partner for Success
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Empowering women to navigate midlife challenges with strategic positivity, enthusiasm, and adaptability. Through fostering connection and growth, we enable women to embrace change, achieve goals, and flourish. In moments of mindful stillness, self-discovery unfolds, guiding them towards nourishment and empowerment."
Pilates is a form of exercise similar to yoga, involving a series of movements that concentrate on core strength, posture, balance, and flexibility. Pilates has been proven to improve overall well-being as well as general fitness. Practising Pilates regularly provides plenty of well-rounded benefits. After spending more than 20 years in various Pilates studios around the globe I believe the beauty of Pilates is that anyone, at any age, can get started. Through controlled and progressive movements, you can reshape your body! Pilates makes you stop and think about what you are doing. Focusing the mind, regulating your breathing, and using internal resistance is an extremely powerful way to tone the body. In my studio, I focus on reintroducing the mind-to-body concept. Coordination is key to the way the exercises flow and it concentrates on working the body as a whole instead of individual parts. Using reformers in all our sessions assists us with lengthening and expanding the muscles, instead of bunching them up. Therefore allowing them to become longer and leaner. International studies support the notion that exercise can benefit mental health, and for me, Pilates has been no exception! I found that the constant focus on breathing through our sessions can have an incredibly calming effect - setting you up for the rest of the day - or ending the day on a high, with a deep connection.
Mind-Body-Balance
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I create a nurturing and supportive environment where you can find both physical and emotional balance through Pilates. Learn to love and laugh through the ups-and-downs of hot flushes and fancy footwork…"
WHY REFORMERS?
Medieval-torture-chamber
The Reformer — it looks kind of scary. A frame, called the ‘carriage’, moves around on wheels and is attached to one end by a set of springs, which provides resistance as the platform is moved. There’s also a footbar and long straps, which can be used by the legs and arms, and shoulder blocks for stopping the client from falling off when working out.
It can be used in a huge range of ways to benefit strength, flexibility, and balance; the majority of movements involving pushing or pulling the platform against the spring resistance and controlling the movement back, or holding it in place, this can be done standing, sitting, upside down and using all the different elements of the Reformer.
I still enjoy the versatility of the Reformer - it can continue to challenge even the most experienced Pilates lover!
My top 5 benefits of Reformer Pilates include:
1. Full body workout (even the smaller target muscles)
Using a Reformer to perform specific, individualized movements will give you a balanced, full-body workout. The subtly of the springs on a Reformer globally strengthens the whole body to not just target the large muscle movers, but also activate the smaller stabilizers. Where there is uneven weakness, you are also able to work unilaterally to focus on and correct imbalances.
2. Builds strength and tones muscles (without the bulk)
Reformer Pilates allows you to move through full range while working on strengthening muscles. This dynamic form of exercise cleverly uses the machine’s springs and levers to create resistance and allow for equal focus on the concentric and eccentric contractions to create long, lean, toned muscles. It not only targets major muscle groups, but also the small stabilizing muscles are called to action when working on a reformer machine.
3. Low impact (but high intensity)
Reformer Pilates is ideal, under professional guidance, for anyone suffering and recovering from an injury. The springs and ropes are specifically designed to enable you to work in the horizontal plane rather than weight-bearing, reducing the load through your body. The low impact allows for repetitive movements to occur which in turn tones and strengthens the injured areas to speed recovery.
4. Improves core and posture (can reduce back pain)
Many of the exercises performed on a Reformer machine target the core whilst working the peripheral postural muscles at the same time. A stronger core is essential for ideal posture.
5. Improves mental health (a most welcome post COVID benefit)
Since its creation, a lot of information focuses on the benefits of Reformer Pilates on increasing muscle strength, toning, improving flexibility and posture. Research continues to emerge on the positive impacts that Reformer Pilates has on Mental Health. From using the steadiness of your breath to find mindfulness in a movement to stress management and relaxation. As a from of exercise, Reformer Pilates can reduce stress hormones like cortisol and increase endorphins, your body’s feel-good chemicals, giving you a natural mood boost. Creating mind-body-balance!